Is it possible for someone to fully understand themselves? Is self-knowledge limited by one's understanding of their past?

I like the idea of fully understanding myself but I don’t think it’s possible. Certainly, I want to understand myself and I work at it. I also make progress, and appreciate understanding myself better. But fully understanding myself is something else.

For a start, there are some things about myself I’d prefer to keep hidden! I have an idea what they are but full clarity on them might be a bit much! I think we’re quite good at hiding stuff about ourselves we’d rather not see!

I’m sure self-knowledge is limited by our understanding of our past, but more generally it’s limited by our humanness. Over the years I’ve learned to understand my past better, including both my early family life and attitudes as a child and teenager. Yet much remains hidden, and though I could engage with imaginative exercises to reveal more, limits remain.

For me, to be human is to live within limits, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. In terms of self-understanding, it can be hard to grasp the present simply because situations and my relationship with them are often so complex I rarely see the whole of them. And for practical purposes, we don’t need to. We see enough to enable us to make good judgements. But that limitation prevents full self-knowledge. I don’t see it as a bad thing, nor does it lead me to give up trying to understand myself, it’s just the way things are.

Self-knowledge has always fascinated people, and there’s a vast literature on it from ancient to modern times. People have also seen it in very different ways, and that in itself is revealing. For example, it raises the question of what this self that I’m trying to understand actually is!

Some have found a way out by looking to God. If I can’t see the whole of ‘myself’ from my vantage point within the world, maybe there’s a Being who has, as it were, a view from above. Maybe God sees the entire landscape of me, and by relating to such a Being I can understand myself better. Whatever you make of that, it seems like an interesting idea to me!